Some folks enjoy money-saving challenges, while others adopt unconventional approaches like reusing dental floss or limiting food spending to just $4 a day. But those of us who’ve practiced frugality for years — albeit in less extreme fashions — may assume we’ve already heard every tip and trick.
But is that really true?
From my time living and working overseas, I’ve noticed people outside of North America often lead very thrifty lives to make their funds stretch further. Many habits are familiar — packing lunches for work, choosing water over soft drinks at restaurants, reusing plastic bags and recycling cans for a bit of extra income.
Yet some of the ways people extend their rupees, quetzales and yuan might spark an “aha” moment. Could you add any of these money-saving tactics to your own frugal toolkit?
1. Forage for Food
The natural world offers a variety of edible plants that often go unnoticed. When American educator Melanie Sosinski taught in Poland, she found that many students and their families would head into nearby woods to gather wild mushrooms and berries. These finds added wonderful flavors to their meals. After the corn harvest near my home in China, retirees rush out with sacks hoping to find extra ears to turn into porridge. An apple tree in my neighborhood park is popular with children and adults alike; we’ve already gathered 10 pounds from it this year.
Do neighbors have fruit trees or berry bushes that go unused? Offer to share the harvest if you may pick from their trees. Drive along rural roads and you might spot apple, pear and plum trees, raspberry or blackberry bushes, or other fruits native to your area.
Outside my house, I once dismissed some plants as weeds. I later learned that one of them is purslane — an edible plant! We’ve eaten it in salads, stir-fries and green smoothies since it can be used like spinach and is high in Omega-3s and vitamin E. At my mother-in-law’s suggestion, we even dried some for potential medicinal uses like reducing fevers and treating diarrhea.
2. Haggle for Prices
In many parts of Asia, bargaining is part of everyday life — even for ordinary items like vegetables. Whether you’re buying a computer, a phone, a bed or a home, there’s often room to negotiate a lower price if you just ask and are willing to haggle a bit.
Want to sharpen your negotiation techniques? Steve Gillman wrote a helpful piece on bargaining tactics.
3. Empty Every Last Drop
From mayonnaise and mustard to toothpaste and laundry detergent, there’s usually a method to extract every bit of product from a container. Snipping the bottle open with scissors and using a rubber spatula can yield an extra week’s worth of conditioner!
Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich often jokes about how his immigrant parents squeeze out every last bit of shampoo before discarding the bottle. His post on why immigrants save so much more includes comments with worldwide money-saving tips.
4. Hand-Wash Garments
Hand-washing isn’t the quickest method, but it preserves clothes longer than machine washing. My husband still has jeans from the mid-1990s in great condition, if a bit out of style. I’ve noticed my undergarments last much longer since I started doing this.
5. Use Cloth Instead of Paper
Several Asian societies are known for raising diaper-free infants, but during the baby’s first weeks they often use homemade cloth diapers — typically old T-shirts or long underwear cut into large pieces.
The same idea makes excellent cleaning rags, and you can fashion a simple mop by cutting cloth into strips, knotting them together and fastening them to a long wooden handle.
6. Seek Family Advice
Before buying items — whether a small appliance like a toaster oven or a larger purchase like a television — it’s common in many cultures to consult family: parents, aunts, uncles — the extended network!
Amy Dunn Moscoco notes that her Guatemalan in-laws routinely do this. You never know who might have a great contact, a friends-and-family discount, a coupon, or even a spare of the item you need.
7. Charge Electronics at Work
While teaching at a high school in China, I saw colleagues carry electric bicycle batteries into our office each day to charge them while they worked — avoiding the higher electricity costs they’d face at home. They’d also charge phones, laptops and any other low-battery devices after plugging in their bike batteries.
When I asked about their home power habits, they advised unplugging everything immediately after use or once a device is fully charged. Consider bringing your phone charger to work and using a power strip to switch off lamps, TVs and other energy-hungry devices when not in use.
8. Use Others’ Facilities and Conserve Your Water
In China, “shower centers” offer a hot shower and buffet dinner for roughly $5, often upselling services like shoe shines and massages. Locals sometimes take advantage of this to enjoy a warm shower and a meal for the price of one service. Another tactic is to time workouts to coincide with when you want to shower and use your gym’s showers — a habit Laura Alvarez Mendivil observed in her travels across Spain, Finland, France and China.
If showering outside the home isn’t feasible, try maximizing the water you do use. My family keeps a five-gallon pail in the bathroom to collect extra water from washing vegetables, hand-washing clothes or cooking. We then use that water to “flush” the toilet, saving money and avoiding waste. It may sound odd, but it’s easy to adapt to. While we don’t track the exact savings (my husband used this trick long before we married), it’s satisfying to know we’re conserving resources.
This approach can be adopted by any household to reuse bathwater or leftover kitchen water. Alternatively, use this “gray water” for indoor plants or your garden.
